Christ’s Passion: Cliché or Cachet?

There’s a feature on my writing software that I can’t live without. Depending upon your computer’s age and the software it runs you may have this as well. Inside the spell-check tool is both a grammar checker and a reading analysis. My software does these tasks in two ways. One is clicking on the icon marked, ABC. The other is to set a feature that underlines misspelled words in red, as well as underlining grammatical problems in green, while I’m typing.

The program says the grammatical mistake I make most often is writing passive sentences. Sales and marketing folks, sports writers, fund-raising experts and some English teachers, say that passive sentences are boring. They lack zip. They’re usually lengthier than sentences using active verbs. This more dynamic style engages a different part of the readers’ and hearers’ brains. Sentences with active verbs chemically stimulate more dramatic reactions and responses from readers and hearers.

Writing often this week, for the worship folder, the newsletter and the blog, all this was on my mind while studying Philippians 2:5-11 (held to be an ancient baptismal hymn) and Luke 23:1-49 (a portion of Jesus’ passion). I was struck by different thoughts and feelings when hearing Luke’s story-telling approach to the last days of Jesus, in contrast to the more poetic approach Paul uses when he includes this hymn in his letter. Now that’s no great insight. A storyteller’s style differs, almost by definition, from a poet’s or a song-writer’s method of writing and composing.

The feelings I’m talking about lie deeper than the obvious. Both Luke and Paul’s hymn writer want to provide detail about the same event, the death of Jesus. Luke, though, puts the thoughts and feelings of Jesus in the mouth of Jesus. Once we move past the entry into Jerusalem, where Jesus is clearly in command, we don’t hear much from Jesus himself on Thursday and Friday.

The momentum in Luke’s account, the way he moves the death plot forward, is done by himself as narrator, or by means of his “reporting” the words and feelings of secondary players. Looking at the details, time-lines, and reactions in Luke’s telling makes Jesus seem like a passive character in the grandest adventure of his own story.

The hymn, on the other hand, offers insights that are inferred or surmised from the composer’s thoughts about Jesus in the midst of these events. The composer, then, infuses these reflections onto and into Jesus.

Even though this style has a definite “outside / in” quality, the result is anything but that. Look at how powerful, in control, and decisive the hymn’s Jesus sounds; He:
• did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited
• emptied himself
• took the form of a slave
• humbled himself
• obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross.
See the difference? The hymn’s Jesus doesn’t look as much like a victim. The hymn’s Jesus is an active agent.

The hymn’s Jesus looks much more like the Good Shepherd Jesus we hear in John 10:14-18: "I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They'll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father." (The Message).

The hymn helps us see Jesus amidst this death-plot, not as the victim of the wolf, but as the caretaker, guarantor of the sheep’s well-being. The hymn has something to say to the sheep, as well. At the name of Jesus:
• we should bend our knees
• our tongues should confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of the Father. (Not should, as in command, should as in what logical alternative is there?)

Why am I telling you all this? Because what Paul wrote, what the Bible says is: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5)

Sometimes, when somebody like me tries to break open a text for folks like you, we both wind up confused. Of course, I think I’m doing a good job when I show you the difference between a bible story and a bible hymn. But it can’t end there. If I leave you thinking that once we’ve sliced and diced these pages what we’re about is only literary criticism, I’ve done you a disservice. Like as not, I’ve committed a sin (missed the mark).

See, these aren’t just words and stories, parables and songs, proverbs and folktales about God. These aren’t even simply the trustworthy accounts of long ago folks’ experiences with God. These are a living God’s word spoken to us here and now.

God means for God’s presence in these words to inflame us and to stir up in us a living, active response to what this God is saying to us in this time and place - in, with, and under these words. As your pastor I want this understanding to be on your minds, in your hearts, at your finger tips, always. I want that for you and for us, especially this week, as together we consider how we will respond to what God does for us, and for the world, by means of Jesus and his cross.

It’s time to get that sorry picture Mel Gibson painted off your radar screen. Of course Jesus suffered, suffered greatly. Of course Jesus’ suffering is for us, that is, has a personal and eternal impact, or effect on us.

Don’t you think that if God thought it important for us to have a picture of the depth and level of Jesus’ physical torture, God’s evangelists would have done that painting? The evangelists don’t avoid the pain and suffering. Neither do they dwell on it. As they tell it, as this early composer sang about it, it’s neither necessary nor sufficient to get stuck in that portrait.

From the beginning, God has rejected revenge. Just prior to expelling Adam and Eve from the garden, for disobedience – that is, not listening to God, look at what God did. God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them. (Genesis 3:21, The Message).

It’s not completely right to say we caused that to happen. It’s not accurate to say God needed that to happen to satisfy grievances God had, or has, against us.

What’s truthful to say, and to see, is this. God allowed this to happen. Jesus chose, as in willingly agreed to go along with what God was allowing. God moved this way for us, so we might turn around and begin to live, and move, and have our being inside this same God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness, which sets us free in Jesus.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. That’s the overriding focus of this Holy Week. That’s what we’ll ponder together on Maundy Thursday, as we wash feet then share bread and wine. That’s what we’ll speak to God for, and listen to God say, on Good Friday.

Here’s what that means, not just for two days out of the year, but for everyday that we say we want to walk as disciples in the footsteps of Jesus and the God who loves him.
• What happens when God’s will is the last thing on your mind and seldom penetrates your heart? When your talk is a cliché and your walk has no cachet.
• What goes on in your life when your relationship with God lacks integrity?
• What overwhelms a country when its citizens believe God blesses them to the exclusion of everyone else?
• What occurs in your world when some crowd catches you up and you’re dragged off course?
• What are the everyday consequences when you’re bought off, for some modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver?
• What goes down when your religion oppresses and condemns other children of God, in the name of God?

The God who loves Jesus, the Jesus who loves God, tell us over and over, how deeply God loves. They show us, over and over, what lengths God goes, willingly, to embrace passionately even the most raggedy characters our biblical pages describe.

Surely, someone in here looks enough like you to move you to respond to this living God with the loving word God desires to hear from each of us this day: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! (Luke 19:37-38)